


Advancing

by Celandine



Series: Dakin/Irwin [8]
Category: History Boys (2006)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-16
Updated: 2007-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-12 02:52:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/119968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/pseuds/Celandine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A telephone message provokes a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advancing

The irony of it makes Tom laugh, sometimes, sharp bursts that tear from his throat and leave him breathless, trembling in the wheeled metal chair that is cage and protection, torment and salvation. A motorbike accident and he'd come out with a mere limp. A fall on his own front steps and he's crippled for life. To be sure, the latter might not have happened but for the former, his bad leg giving way unexpectedly on the damp slick stone.

Still, ironic. He supposes that he should be glad that the second accident happened when it did, if it had to happen at all. Sooner and he might not have been able to persuade the Powers That Be at the BBC to carry on with the television programme that he'd been working on for years. As it was, his handicap could be put to good cinematographic use. It lends him an air of reliable authority. Tom still recalls the headmaster at Cutler's Grammar School suggesting he grow a moustache for the same reason.

His laughter fades as it always does when he recalls that year. Not even a year, a mere few months, ending with promises broken. He'd meant to take up the offered position, but after Hector's death he couldn't. His injury had been the proffered and understood excuse, as it had been also for his failure to meet—Dakin, yes, that name is unforgotten. Not any of their names, but Dakin's always first in his memory.

Odd how it is the surnames he recalls. Or perhaps not. The boys called each other by surname, and so did he call them, and now Tom strives to recall Dakin's christian name, which he must have known. Christopher? William? Not Anthony, no, that was Lockwood. Funny. Tom thinks harder. James, he decides finally, but there is a niggling doubt in his mind.

It's the telephone message that has brought all this past to mind again, a message left not on his own answer phone, but rather relayed through two secretaries and the medium of a note in precise handwriting. _A Mr Dakin rang. Says he is a former pupil._ And then the number, a sequence of meaningless digits, save that Tom recognizes the London prefix. He is unsurprised that Dakin should have ended up here; the only surprise is that he has rung Tom at all, for any reason, after another lifetime of eighteen years.

Tom looks at his mobile, neat and compact on the table, weighing down the corner of the message slip that he has brought home with him. He looks down at his body, trapped in the wheelchair. He _can_ stand and walk, painfully and slowly, but finds it less humiliating to use the chair most of the time. He looks, finally, at the desk in whose drawer is a long-outdated diary in which he had once written, _Drink with Dakin, 1 pm._

He picks up the phone, dials the number. He waits through one ring, two, three. There is no reason to leave a message, he decides, and is on the point of hanging up when a once-familiar voice says, "Hello?"


End file.
